


Of Peace, of War (But What of Us?)

by ohmygoshwhatascream



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reality of War, Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27197887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygoshwhatascream/pseuds/ohmygoshwhatascream
Summary: Shulk has his mantra.
Relationships: Reyn/Shulk (Xenoblade Chronicles)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37





	Of Peace, of War (But What of Us?)

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything properly for a good few months. This came completely out of the blue. I should really be working on my other Xenoblade fics but Eh, I'm quite fond of this one. Hope y'all enjoy xx 
> 
> this piece was also kind of personal to write so I'm a bit apprehensive about posting, ngl. The style is different from my other pieces - apologies if the formatting is weird to read; I wanted the whole piece to feel uncomfortable. Hopefully, I achieved that.

Shulk has his mantra. The one he runs through his head from dawn to dusk; the one that tastes likes bitter lime on the back of his tongue. Always, he feels the sting of it down his throat; the bubbling pit that rises in his stomach in acid that _burns._

_ Smile. Show your teeth, not too much, but enough that your eyes will crinkle all the same. Inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. Remember what Fiora told you, back when she had warm hands and a heart beneath soft flesh. Try not to think about the  _ tick-tick-ticking _ of her new body; the water that rises from stripped-away skin in hot steam. Her tongue; silver-laced, that clacks against her still-bone teeth. Not quite human, not quite machine. Dunban asks how you're doing; like he does every night. It's a good job you practised that fake smile in the blurry reflection of Reyn's scrap-driver. Teeth flash, Dunban turns away. He's placated for now. Tells you he's going to get some sleep but everybody knows he'll stay awake all night. He always does. Sharla will ask how you're doing next. She won't believe that plastic-fake smile; she always sees right through you. Pretend not to hear when she asks you again, say you're tired, avoid Melia's piercing gaze as she acts like she's not listening in on your conversation. Laugh with Riki when he says something you think you might have once found funny. Feel it catch in your throat; the sourness of a lie that you still haven't learned to stomach.  _

It is the familiar ritual; one that Shulk grows used to, day in and day out. When his muscles are sore and his hands - calloused and scarred where they had once been smooth at the fingertips - throb with the pain of the Monado he has never seemed to let go of. Even when the sword is no longer digging into the heels of his palms; he feels its phantom weight at all times. The ritual is always there. And always, he uses it.

_ Stretch your fingers out. Realise it's futile; they'll be just as sore tomorrow. Try not to fidget because it irritates Fiora. She won't say anything because she steps around you like you're made of glass. They all do. Like they're scared you'll break with the slightest touch. Maybe you will. Then she'll start asking questions you don't know the answer to. She always does. She used to have a sixth-sense for you; she'd always know when to stop. She's lost it now, though. Or maybe you're too different. Maybe you've changed too much for anyone to know what to do with you anymore. _

The Mechonis is cold. Always cold. Different from Valak mountain; not formed from snow and ice and toes turning black under raggedy nails. Not freezing their blistered feet; still stinking of half-rotted flesh from the permanent dampness of Satorl Marsh. 

At least it had been home, back there. When everything had been so simple. 

_ The Mechon will kill you. They killed Fiora. Kill them first. Hold your flashy red sword between your sweat-filled palms. Pretend they don't shake. Hide behind Reyn because he's better at fighting. Realise you're supposed to be the hero. Still hide behind Reyn because he's familiar and comforting and he never pushes you too hard. He gets injured, you get guilty. Repeat.  _

Out here in unfamiliar lands; walking through abandoned scars of a battle long gone, Shulk longs for the purple haze of Tephra Cave. Wishes his flesh could burn under the acidity of Arachno venom once more. Wishes for the snarl of an Armu as it rears into his chest; the sting of blue ether as Sharla mends the cracks between creaky old bones. Pain at home was still pain, but it had always felt familiar somehow. As if, no matter how far they travelled, Colony 9 was always waiting somewhere below their feet. 

Here, the place stinks of motor oil. The clang of boots on metal, alien and foreign in a way that makes Shulk's skin crawl.  He had devoted his life to the arts of metal, of the unnatural. Of gears and cogs held together by nuts and bolts; copper and iron and steel. Now he walks through a land of nothing but; made of coal and the smothering of blackened ash. In his lungs; alive and natural like the old trees he used to watch Reyn climb, the ash settles. He tries not to choke on it; swallows it down until it rests like lead in his stomach. He would have loved this place once, perhaps. He would have longed to pick it apart, to take it all to pieces until he understood how it worked. To put it all back together again. Now, the quicker this is all over the better.

He misses the freshness of running water. The grittiness of the dirt shores of Colony 9; his toes plunged into pleasantly cool blue as the sunlight beat down on his bare shoulders.

He remembers when he could trace the divots of his fingerprints. The thin lines that marked him as himself.  He wonders when the calluses formed over them. Smoothed it all down into the nothingness of roughened flesh. 

Perhaps it was from the shrapnel he caught in his fingers; the remnants of messing with a temperative box of explosives in Magmell Ruins. The scar across his ring finger where a volff had almost bit it clean off. He remembers trying not to shake too badly as Reyn - with his own calloused hands, large and clumsy and warm - sewed the ragged edges back together. Maybe it was from the time when he slipped into the ether stream of Galahad Fortress. It only took a few seconds before Sharla dragged him back out, but the burns deep in his flesh had taken weeks to fully heal. He still has a nasty scar running down the left side of his face and his vision has never quite returned to what it was. 

Maybe it was some other injury. The ones he can't remember. The ones that all just merged together; became one big blur that he can't quite grab ahold of. 

Whatever it is, there is a roughness that has permeated whatever he was before all of this. A roughness that he isn't sure will ever fade.

Right now, it is easy to keep moving on. There is no time to stop, no time to think. It has to be one foot in front of the other, they cannot slow. Not even for a moment. 

_ Don't think about the end. Don't wonder what happens when all of this is over. _

He does not know which he fears more. Death or peace.

Death isn't an option. If he fails now; he will have allowed the world to fall into ruin. 

_ Your fault. It's your fault. The Monado is yours to wield; the world cannot afford to suffer anymore. It will not suffer from your guilt, from your weakness. And yet you let them live. Time and time again. Xord, Mumkhar. Maybe Egil too, when that time comes. But if they do not die, there is always a threat. If they remain unthwarted, there will always be another fight. _

Peace is good. Peace is what they want. But where does that leave him? Where does that leave all of them? The world can't just go back to how it was. Shulk can't go back.  He is different now. So different that, if they return victorious, Shulk doesn't know if he will recognise his own reflection.

Peace is good. But peace leaves them all listless, hanging in midair. _What do soldiers do when there is no war to fight? Where do they go?_

In a world with no war, one where soldiers need not exist... Sharla would have gotten married. Melia would be her father's aide for another century, perhaps. Riki would be with his family; still in debt but happy as the title of _Heropon_ never becomes his and instead he takes _grampypon_ to be his own. Mumkhar would have never turned; he and Dunban and Dickson would laugh under cigarette smoke; relax in the absence of a war that had never rotted them all from the inside out. Fiora would be a chef, probably. Or whatever she set her mind to. Whatever she wanted; the future would always be hers. Reyn would still have his parents. He wouldn't have snuck around the garbage of Giorgio's stall; sneaking discarded leftovers when people's backs were turned.

But if there was no war, there would have been no Monado. No purpose. No drive. Where would Shulk have ended up? 

Perhaps with his parents. The ones he can barely remember. The ones he's not quite sure were ever real. 

Shulk needs this war.

Peace is good. But on the faux-silence of long nights; where all pretend to sleep under a sky that does not look like their own, death becomes what peace should have always been. 

_ Scratch at your hands. Peel away the hardened flesh; dig under calluses to find the softness you want to desperately believe isn't lost. Ignore the sting, ignore the pain. Feel the warmth of blood beneath your fingernails, keep scratching.  _

Large hands cover his own. Calloused and rough. Scarred on the knuckles; missing a finger on the right hand, missing a thumb on the left. Gauze wrapped around the wrists; disappearing under heavy metal armour that hasn't been taken off. Shulk knows that when it is, the skin underneath will be rubbed raw; encrusted with dirt and sweat. 

Reyn pulls Shulk's hands apart, places them by his sides. When he moves; Shulk can see the stiffness of the one shoulder; the way the joints don't quite bend as they should. He tilts his head backwards, looks up into Reyn's face; just as kind as he remembers. There's a deep scar that won't heal running from his left cheekbone down to the tip of his cupid's bow. A scar above that cuts straight across his eyebrows. Shulk remembers Reyn getting that one. A few inches lower and he would have been blinded permanently. 

_ Lucky, _ they had told Reyn.  _ You were lucky. _

Shulk laughs, despite himself. Laughs even when nothing is funny. Reyn is eighteen years old. Maybe nineteen now; Shulk had stopped counting the days after Prison Island. Reyn is missing a finger, a thumb. He's broken his ribs more times than Shulk can count; he has a chunk missing from his right thigh. The tip of his ear is missing. He's more scars than smooth skin at this point. They all are.

Reyn doesn't ask why he's laughing. Maybe he already knows. 

Reyn. Full of light. Of anger and hope and laughter; the one who taught Shulk how to swim. The one who jumped out of trees that Shulk wouldn't dare climb. The one who Shulk grew up with; who promised to be his best friend for the rest of their lives. Who promised he'd never leave Shulk. Never abandon him, no matter what. Reyn. Of a heart worn on his sleeve; of love first and logic later. 

"Shulk, mate," He says, voice deeper than it was when they first set out. 

There's an apology on Shulk's lips that won't quite come out. The sting of tears in his eyes that he knows will never fall. Not anymore.

He takes Reyn's hands into his own. Holds onto them like he always had; uses them as his lifesaver in a tumultuous sea. 

The gaps of Reyn's missing fingers is strange and unfamiliar. Foreign. Shulk can't feel the callouses on Reyn's palms - not anymore. 

The warmth is the same, though. Reyn is always warm. 

_ I love you, _ he wants to say.  _ I always have. _ He doesn't though. He never does. 

"Stay with me," he says instead. He does not want to be alone.  And Reyn squeezes his hands, presses a kiss against Shulk's cheek - blistered and scarred and ugly. He doesn't seem to mind, though. He doesn't even flinch. 

"Of course," whispers Reyn. "I always will." 

_ Smile. Let it reach your eyes. Inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. Lean against Reyn, bury your nose into the crook beneath his jaw. Ignore the clumsiness of your armour slotted against his. Try not to think about the future, the Monado never shows you anything pleasant anyway. Let Reyn tangle your fingers together, let him kiss the scar on your ring finger. Close your eyes. Smile despite it all. Feel human, just for a moment.  _

Reyn pulls him closer.  _ I love you, _ he doesn't say.

_ I love you, _ they both hear anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been super shit at commenting recently, I try my best but oof mental health kicks ass. If I don't reply to your comment, chances are I have seen it and I appreciate it very much! Thank you to all my readers, both new and returning! You guys are hella cool.


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